Are they going to sell DRM and non-DRM tracks side by side? That would be confusing and wouldn't make any sense. Before there was the price differential, but now if there is no difference in price, why sell DRM'd tracks at all if you can sell the non-DRM tracks.

Originally posted by doormat:Are they going to sell DRM and non-DRM tracks side by side? That would be confusing and wouldn't make any sense. Before there was the price differential, but now if there is no difference in price, why sell DRM'd tracks at all if you can sell the non-DRM tracks.

That's a good point. I would imagine Apple would simply drop the DRM'd tracks.

A long, long possibility is that Apple could lower the price on DRM tracks, but given its steadfast attitude towards $0.99, I think the former is more likely.

At this point, it would be impossible for Apple to sell tracks for higher than 128 kbps at 99 cents without triggering a revolt similar to the iPhone price drop. The people who bought x00 million tracks sold to date will want a free upgrade to the higher bit rate versions, immediately. It seems Apple painted themselves into a corner with that one.

A related note, I wonder what will happen to the cost of upgrading previously purchased albums? I just noticed that some albums from Nettwerk now show up on my Upgrade My Library page, but aren't any cheaper to upgrade than the last time I had tracks to upgrade ($0.40 CAD per track, yikes!).

Actually, I wonder if there's a way to tell iTunes that I never want to upgrade a particular album? Some of this stuff, I can re-download from eMusic for cheaper than paying iTS' upgrade price (too bad I hadn't discovered eMusic until after I bought them from iTS).

Still no lossless option, or at the very least 320kbps CBR mp3 for DJ usage, so I don't have to transcode and lose quality? Well, I guess I still won't be spending any of the $200+ per month I spend on music with Apple

Considering all the estimates that place Apple's cut of iTunes song downloads at $0.20, $0.30 at most, I can't imagine Amazon is walking away with any profits to write home about right now.

The conspiracy theorist in me says the Amazon MP3 Store debuted for two very specific reasons:

1) For Amazon, it's a baby project with the eventual hope of sparking sales of *all* DMPs—not just iPods. Imagine if they could start bundling any albums and players they want, or offering discounts on players vs. music, or vice versa. They have a tremendous opportunity to get creative with what they package here.

2) The labels cut the deal with Amazon to make Apple sweat and motivate it towards agreeing to variable pricing. After all, if Amazon prices force Apple to shave its prices and profits even farther past $0.99 tracks and $9.99 albums, Apple could more or less be forced into variable pricing so they can at least try to break even on the store overall.

But like others have said: either way, competition is great for consumers. I just hope this doesn't turn south and somehow start screwing us again. I don't these labels farther than I can throw them.

Reality Check, people: Apple is not going to remove DRM from all their music, as most of the labels are not ready for this yet. But the real question is whether Apple can continue to sell DRMed tracks for the same price as nonDRMed tracks if they are also half the quality. It seems like Apple is going to have to quickly upgrade the quality of the rest of the library.

Assuming this rumor is true, Apple really handled this whole iTunes Plus issue incredibly poorly. If they could sell the tracks at .99 now, they could sell them at that price originally, and the last couple months have been nothing but a money grab.

No, I don't think they need to refund the price difference for all iTunes Plus tracks, but I do think they need to refund people that used the "Upgrade my Library" feature, at the very least.

It really seems like this rumor is true, as I can't imagine Apple having three pricing schemes for music on their store: .99 for DRMed 128 tracks, .99 for some unDRMed 256 tracks, and 1.29 for other unDRmed 256 tracks.

Originally posted by JoeyGeraci:If they could sell the tracks at .99 now, they could sell them at that price originally, and the last couple months have been nothing but a money grab.

How you can say this when you, yourself, one paragraph earlier, pointed out that it's not all up to Apple is a mystery. Do you have secret access to their contract that the rest of us don't? Otherwise we have no ideas what the terms negotiated were for either side, and we also don't know whether they've changed recently. In addition, we don't know what Amazon's terms were, except that they were not necessarily the same as Apple's. Given the sea of uncertainty in which we swim, you sure display a lot of assurance in your statements.

quote:

No, I don't think they need to refund the price difference for all iTunes Plus tracks, but I do think they need to refund people that used the "Upgrade my Library" feature, at the very least.

What a load of bullshit. People paid for, and got, a genuine upgrade. There was nothing sneaky about it, or the price. It comes as a shock to you that things change price over time? Wow. In addition, upgrading music incurs at least a couple of real costs for Apple, including the one time expense of setting up the new system and the ongoing expenses of bandwidth and keeping things running. That's worth at least some money, and then as a for-profit corporation I'm not stunned when they try to make some money above absolute costs, which is necessary for future R&D etc.

I was under the impression that full album prices were already identical between regular and plus versions, but I might be mistaken. As an album-only physical disk buyer, I welcome the competitive spark Amazon seems to have provided Apple that might actually finally make digital downloads attractive to us holdouts.

I hope that this is the first shot in real price war that seems to be new trend in the (IMHO rightful and necessary) devaluation of media. Obviously falling prices will always lead to some complaints, but really no one that is a consumer should be complaining. With the dual format (plus downloadable) HD video war also heating up and leading to significant relative bargains heading into the holidays, it's a fascinating time to be a unit of market share.

bacon goldstien:I can confirm that this is in fact the case. I just bought two albums from the Nettwerk label in iTunes Plus for the same price as regular DRM iTunes. Cool bananas.

The albums always cost the same no matter if they were 128kbps DRM ones or 256kbps DRMless ones. DRMless sinlge tracks were the only thing that was more expensive ($1.29 vs. $.99). So what you discovered has been true ever since the EMI DRMless catalogue became available.

I think the ones that are getting screwed in this are the labels, and they can thank Universal for it all. They were bitching for more money. Apple gave them an opportunity to make more by offering DRM-FREE and they turned it down. Instead they choose go to Amazon to sell discounted DRM-Free music so that they can try to establish a large market before dropping itunes and raising prices.

The only thing they accomplished was to force Apple to drop their prices to compete. They can now say a permanent bye bye to sharing that 30% increase Apple offered them. If Apple can persuade the other labels to go DRM Free, Universal just shot themselves and the industry in the foot. I say, Good to ya.

The Amazon store is fine and dandy if you live in the US. I'm aware that non-Americans have managed to fiddle their address to get access, but I order *physical* stuff from Amazon on a reasonably regular basis and I'd like to be delivered to where I actually live...

2) The labels cut the deal with Amazon to make Apple sweat and motivate it towards agreeing to variable pricing. After all, if Amazon prices force Apple to shave its prices and profits even farther past $0.99 tracks and $9.99 albums, Apple could more or less be forced into variable pricing so they can at least try to break even on the store overall.

What is this talking about variable pricing like it's some future thing? Variable pricing is a reality, today, on the iTunes store. Some new releases cost $12-$14, some indie CDs (not EPs but full-length albums) cost $6-$8, some CDs with lots of content cost $18 or more, and so on.

This is a shot across the other labels bows by Apple, "Look you can get 256kbps DRM-free tracks from EMI for 99 cents or you can get 128kbps DRM-ed tracks from the DRM-drum bashing morons. Which label's music are you going to buy?"

Looks like EMI stuff is still $1.29 per track, whereas newer independent stuff is $0.99. They're still asking for $0.30 to upgrade to 256k. Which really doesn't seem like much to ask for a brand new download. Although, considering all the entitled whiners out there these days, they might have been better off reducing it a bit.

The $9.99 iTunes Plus album price is not a surprise. That was part of the original iTunes Plus announcement.

In light of this recent price reduction and the addition of DRM-free indie releases, as well as selective (Apple-determined?) free tracks, hopefully Apple will offer the upstream ability to not place DRM on digital submissions for majors, indies and intermediaries, so the likes of Tunecore and CD Baby can code it into their interfaces.

I did ask Tunecore about this back when iTunes Plus was first announced and they said, "TuneCore doesn't send any audio files to iTunes with DRM. The online retailers are the ones in charge of determining if DRM will be placed on audio files."

I do hope they offer this option soon, it'd be really nice to get my (tiny) label's releases DRM–free.

Most Netwerk and other Indie labels are already available DRM-free at EMusic (and in MP3 format that will play on all MP3 players or on a car CD player that plays MP3's). Apple sells AAC which is playable on iPods and only a few other MP3 players (i.e. the Sony "Bean" A-Trac player). Plus EMusic is far cheaper (about $10 for 30 songs $15 for 50 songs, or $20 for 75 songs). You can even get a RCA 512MB MP3 player at the Circuit City Outlet for $15 which comes with 180 songs from EMusic (15 tracks per month for a year). I bought one yesterday (have yet to pick it up, but it was at my local CC).

I actually bought a Wyclef Jean single last night off of iTunes Plus, and I was a bit confused as to why it only cost $0.99. I double-checked once I downloaded it and it is indeed an iTunes Plus track. Now I know why! It looks like they've already got some tracks lowered in price a little early.